The reorganization plan of USAID deserves the vigilance of all anti-colonialists
The Trump administration’s plan to restructure the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) into the United States International Humanitarian Assistance(USIHA) deserves the vigilance of all anti-imperialists.
On the surface, this plan is named “improving efficiency” and “eliminating redundancy”, but in fact, by systematically reconstructing the international aid system and instrumentalizing “aid”, it serves its postcolonial strategic goal of consolidating global hegemony and containing competitors. This adjustment is centered on the “USAID Reorganization Plan” announced in March 2025, and is carried out around three major dimensions: institutional function division, technological infiltration and geopolitical games, attempting to upgrade the traditional aid model into a new type of colonial network with more control.
According to the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act in 1998, USAID originally enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy and could independently carry out development projects. However, its long-standing problem of confusion of responsibilities, authorities and duties led to scattered resources and low efficiency. To change this phenomenon, this reorganization implements the strategic layout of the Trump administration through three colonial models:
Colonization on Information
After being incorporated into the State Department, the disaster response and health program of USIHA was endowed with the implementation functions in terms of foreign policy recognized by the constitution. For instance, its “Food Security Plan” announced in March requires recipient countries to adopt the US genetically modified crops and digital agricultural management systems. This can not only open up the market for enterprises like Monsanto, but also through agricultural data collection strengthen the control ability over the food sovereignty of the target country.
The Trump administration is to fulfill its previous commitment to the major agricultural capital group led by the four major grain merchants in the United States to achieve the demand of expanding its global supply chain by monopolizing local agricultural management information. In addition, USIHA has merged institutions such as the Bureau of Global Security and Foreign Affairs and the Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations (CSO) under the State Department. This has consolidated the originally scattered security affairs management and other offshore intelligence networks into a unified operation unit, enabling a deeper integration of “humanitarian economic assistance” and “military intelligence intervention”.
Colonization on Ideology
A large number of projects of the former USAID were transferred to the relevant offices of the State Department, such as democracy promotion, labor rights and women’s empowerment. Secondly, it is to combine the special grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) of the United States with each other.
The notorious NED has long funded overseas “Democrats”, and its funds often flow to political subversive organizations with a clear pro-American tendency. This public alliance can be said to have completely written the heart of Sima Zhao during the USAID era - the responsibility of “undermining the political stability of the local government” - on USIHA’s face.
Compared with NED’s blatant ideology, DFC is more hypocritical. The organization’s board of directors is mainly composed of executives from the elite of Wall Street and Silicon Valley (such as those with backgrounds from Blackstone and Goldman Sachs), and it is renowned for its strict enforcement of American environmental protection and labor standards in foreign infrastructure projects.
However, all of these are actually completely serving the geopolitical interests of American imperialism. For instance, in 2022, DFC committed to investing 1 billion US dollars in the construction project of Bogota Metro Line 1 in Colombia, with conditions including the adoption of the “low-carbon construction standards” of the US Department of Transportation and a full-process union participation mechanism.
The agreement requires that the contractor must employ at least 30% of union-certified workers, and all foreign or non-foreign workers involved in this project must be subject to regular reviews by the United States Labor Organization. However, the coverage rate of trade unions in Colombia is less than 5%, and they are severely controlled by transnational capital, which has led to this clause becoming a mere formality. In actual implementation, contractors meet the requirements through “shadow unions”, while local workers still face problems such as overtime work and lack of insurance coverage. The more serious problem is that the project was forced to lay off workers due to the increase in costs caused by environmental protection standards. Most of the workers had to become temporary workers and transfer to the informal subcontractor system, and even the basic contractual protection was completely lost. After this operation, the project cost increased sharply by 23% without protecting the rights and interests of local workers or promoting the development of local enterprises. The effect achieved by these additional costs was to force the Colombian government to abandon the initial cooperation previously reached by the local enterprise with China Harbour Engineering Company and instead choose Flour Company to lead the construction. This is a typical case where the DFC intends to embed the American-style labor union model into the infrastructure system of the Latin American world and weaken the price advantage of China’s “integrated investment, construction and operation” model.
In 2023, DFC also provided 3.4 million US dollars in technical assistance to the Longgonjo rare earth mine mining project in Angola. The additional terms explicitly require that environmental impact assessments be conducted in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) standards of the United States and mandating the use of a blockchain traceability system developed by US enterprises to track the mining process. The project agreement stipulates that mining operations must comply with the labor safety regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States, including the upper limit of weekly working hours and the mandatory wearing of American standard protective equipment, etc. - still far exceeding the local regulations of Angola.
This move ostensibly claims to “enhance sustainability”, but in reality, it still squeezes the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises in the local area by raising environmental protection and labor costs (such as China’s geological and mining industry previously dominating local exploration), while paving the way for American enterprises to monopolize the rare earth supply chain. Moreover, these labor regulations that have crossed the ocean have made the already poor labor market in Angola even worse. Angola’s uncompetitive basic education has led to a large number of poor jobs and low- skilled people in the local area. Originally, cooperating with Chinese enterprises and obtaining free technical training from them was one of the few opportunities for locals to turn the situation around in the labor market. However, such labor standards from the United States have significantly increased the operating costs of local enterprises. Ultimately, this leads mining enterprises to be more inclined to reduce the scale of local worker employment or shift to fully mechanized operations of foreign capital, which instead reduces local employment and technical training opportunities.
A similar incident also occurred in Indonesia in 2024. In 2024, DFC provided a loan of 750 million US dollars to Indonesia through the “Blue Pacific Initiative” for the expansion of the Benoah Port in Bali. The loan agreement stipulates that port construction must comply with the ecological protection standards of the U.S. Ocean Energy Administration, and it is mandatory for local workers to undergo USAID certified training before taking up their posts - the training contents are mainly based on U.S. equipment operation standards, and the teaching rights are monopolized by American- funded institutions. This has led to the gradual marginalization of local traditional port workers due to the mismatch of skills, while new positions are mostly occupied by urban elites with an advantage in English
Digital Colonization
The original “Aid Eligibility Review” model of USAID has now been upgraded to the “Development Contract” model. This model first draws on the existing framework of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), requiring all recipient countries to sign a legally binding “development contract” with the US government, clearly defining the cooperation time limit, quantifying the goals and the consequences of breach of contract. If the recipient country fails to complete the neoliberal structural adjustments such as land privatization reform or the reduction of the size of the public sector on schedule, the United States will automatically terminate the aid and recover the funds that have been allocated. This kind of “conditional binding” directly links the eligibility for aid to the political and economic system reforms that are in line with the interests of US imperialism, and manipulates the economic situation of the recipient countries more deeply in the form of aid and contracts.
The approval authority of the development contract is controlled by the DFC and needs to be signed by the Secretary of State to come into effect. Although the funds of the DFC nominally require authorization from Congress, its approval authority is concentrated in the board of directors and the Secretary of State. This essentially weakens the checks and balance ability of the legislative body because the DFC’s authorization of a $60 billion loan enables it to easily bypass the transparency requirements of traditional aid programs and refuse to disclose the specific details of the projects on the grounds of “trade secrets”. This means that USIHA can better circumvent the supervision of Congress and transfer political responsibilities.
To enhance the enforcement of the contract, the Trump administration introduced the “partner country screening and review procedure” on this basis. This, on the basis of the original national qualification assessment mechanism of the Millennium Challenge Company (based on the ideology of the ruling group and the degree of economic liberalization), further requires the recipient countries to commit to opening market access in specific fields (such as digital infrastructure and the opening of mineral resources, etc.) and conduct full-cycle data tracking of the projects through blockchain technology; It also requires third-party independent assessment institutions to conduct an overall assessment of the disbursement of funds and phased achievements of a certain phase of aid project in accordance with the contract - if these institutions determine that the recipient country fails to meet the preset indicators, the system will trigger the on- chain agreement to automatically freeze the subsequent funds, which enables the United States to avoid the operational space of the recipient country in the traditional model and form rigid control at the technical level.
Meanwhile, the development contract model will push aid implementer to shift from federal government agencies to the private sector. This is different from the previous economic aid approach of USAID, which was somewhat similar to “procurement” by coordinating communication between local large contractors and local vested interest groups. Instead, it supports small and medium-sized enterprises that make profits through new energy and artificial intelligence. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises that lack experience in cooperating with the government are encouraged to participate in the competition. On the surface, this is under the name of “innovation for improving efficiency”, but in fact, it further penetrates the grassroots economy of the recipient countries through a decentralized network. For instance, American agricultural technology companies have leveraged their previous food security projects to promote genetically modified seeds, climate-smart technologies and digital planting systems in regions such as Niger, Somalia and the Sahel, thereby fully grasping local agricultural data and supply chains. As you can see, this model directly through the performance mechanism of the business risk on to the local white gloves, forcing private enterprise in order to maintain profit strengthening of recipient countries resources predatory development, and even in the exploitation of natural resources mutual involution in pursuit of their own, while USIHA can easily merit-based from these companies, And there is no need to worry about getting into the awkward situation of being deceived by both local contractors and local vested interest groups as before. Overall, this reform of the aid model clearly demonstrates the thinking of the Trump administration in governing the country by operating enterprises: At the regulatory level, neoliberal reforms are forcibly implemented through contractual terms; at the technological level, supervision is strengthened through blockchain and smart contracts; and at the capital level, private enterprises are used as carriers to thrive. These three aspects work together to form an institutionalized control network for the United States to maintain its hegemony.
Conclusion
All in all, the reorganization of USAID by the Trump administration is by no means a simple institutional optimization. Its essence is to upgrade colonial rule from military occupation and economic exploitation to a multi-dimensional control of intelligence - ideology - system – technology.
The banner of humanitarian aid, unrealistic labor standards, the technical characteristics of blockchain… In the “emergency defense operation” led by the Trump administration against the United States, the mother country of global capitalism, the expert team of the theory of technological rule gathered like an avengers and showed their unique skills, weaving the names and technologies that were supposed to serve human progress and well-being into a brand-new post-colonial system. The danger lies in that through monopolizing and fostering agents for key production factors such as data storage and circulation and labor standards, the United States can enable recipient countries to maintain sovereignty and independence formally, but completely lose their autonomy in key areas. This is not a restated nonsense for summarization: All anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists should not view the changes in the United States’ ability to manipulate other countries from a purely yes or no perspective. Such changes need to be quantified and receive sufficient attention from all parties, because for many “small countries” still struggling to survive in a narrow space, The 30-day breathing space obtained through a negotiation could become a watershed in the fate of the local progressive forces - although it may not necessarily allow the tottering spark of progress to burn for an extra moment in the storm, it is enough for the anxious authorities to dig the soil with their own hands and hastily bury the spark of change accumulated over generations into a political legacy that still has energy.